Oil baron T. Boone Pickens made headlines when he announced that he would be making a massive investment in wind power. He had made plans for a 4 GW wind farm in Pampa, Texas a town along U.S. Highway 60 northeast of Amarillo. The site was set to become the largest wind farm in the U.S.

However, a mere 667 turbines into the construction (likely about a sixth of the total planned turbines) Mr. Pickens is pulling out of the "green gold" project of which he has contributed $10B USD. A deciding factor was the difficulties in securing heavy transmission lines need to link the generators to the nation's power grid. Mr. Pickens tried to get financing for the lines, but the deal fell through.

Now he is pulling out of the project, mostly. He states, "The capital markets have dealt us all a setback. I am committed to 667 wind turbines and I am going to find projects for them. I expect to continue development of the Pampa project, but not at the pace that I originally expected."

Mr. Pickens made a fortune off his venture oil and gas firm Mesa Petroleum that after initial success began gobbling up oil and natural gas companies in the 1980s. Now it appears that Mr. Pickens is returning to his roots. He comments that natural gas is "the only option at this point" and continues, "There's no other, there's nothing else to replace it. It's the one and only resource in America that today can replace foreign oil. It is a cleaner, abundant fuel."

Still he remains optimistic on wind power, stating, "We've got more wind than anybody else in the world, just like they have more oil. I think that's the future of this country. We'll get there."

President Obama's alternative energy efforts have pleased Mr. Pickens, as does a new bill which will offer tax credits for the production of alternative fuels vehicles, including cars that can run on natural gas. In addition to introduce new tax credits the bill will require 50 percent of all new vehicles purchased or placed in service by the U.S. government by Dec. 31, 2014, to be capable of operating on compressed or liquefied natural gas.

Cheers Mr. Pickens, "We're going to now use natural gas in place of foreign oil."

Major wind and solar installations continue to gain traction in America, but the death of the Pickens project in Texas showcases the problems with America's power infrastructure. America is suffering from a decrepit and poorly maintained power grid which not only lowers efficiencies (raising power costs) and contributes to brownouts, but also hinders alternative energy projects. As America has expanded, the grid hasn't expanded quickly enough with it, as this project showcases.

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Here's a hint: since Obama took office, everything is paid for with taxpayer subsidies.

This mess isn't Obabma's fault. I am still baflled why a country supposedly as great as the US has to depend so much on foreign oil to begin with, & for so long. This is many decades in the making & no one has any short term answer or relief for the masses who continue to get hosed at the pump & on their energy bills. Many say the housing market brought down the economy, but also outragious fuel prices. Most only seem to be at the mercy of Oil companies, & foreign countries. At this point I am for any & every possibility which includes more drilling, nuclear, whatever. There must be an answer out there, or maybe not. Why haven't we found an answer to this problem?

The problem is people on the left side of the aisle won't listen or allow any of it because it doesn't give them control, money, and/or power.

great info, so in other words, we are screwed cause they probably haven't built any refineries since the 70s, or nuclear plants, & I have to figure that it just can't be the people on the left side of the isle cause it has been decades, & we are more dependent now than we were back in the 70s 80s..

Oil is mostly used in transportation (also for heating in the Northeast U.S.), and accounts for a bit less than half of the energy consumption of the U.S. Roughly half of that oil is used by passenger cars, and the other half by commercial trucks. The other half of the energy used by the U.S. is mostly electricity, which primarily comes from coal plants (nuclear and hydro are the other big sources).

The U.S. is self-sufficient when it comes to electricity. It and China have the world's greatest coal deposits. The problem, as we're seeing with the development of hybrid and electric vehicles, is that electricity is really difficult to store. That makes it a poor choice for transportation relative to oil (with our current technology). The low population density of the U.S. also leads to greater transportation needs compared to places like Europe and East Asia. So even though the U.S. could by all measures be energy independent, it's just cheaper for us to buy foreign oil to power our transportation industry.

The storage problem of electricity is a non-issue. Only big nuclear and coal plants have difficulty turning on and off. Natural gas is like a light switch and solar, hydro, and wind can be throttled to lower levels of output in seconds if needed. We just need to build the capacity.Once electricity enters oversupply and batteries mature it should be a no brainer switching auto engines into electric motors.Oh, and for the whiners that think electric cars will be stodgy, slow, and difficult to maintain - think again. Electric motors have amazing torgue and the use of electric motors eliminate the need for most of the modern car's engine/transmission woes since the number of moving parts that can wear will plumet. Reliability will be astounding.

It is NOT a non-issue. He was referring to storage in terms of automotive usage. Not power plants, and not future storage solutions. Batteries will improve, yes, but right now we can't switch all our cars to electricity. Even if we did, charging a battery and then using said battery to power a motor isn't exactly super efficient either. I mean you're going Power Source (Coal, Nuclear, etc) -> Transmission (lines and infrastructure) -> Battery (AC/DC conversion required) -> Electric motors. It's still probably better than an ICE, but to what degree, especially with more efficient ICE designs in the pipeline (like HCCI).

As far as electric cars lacking an engine and transmission, this is only true for pure electrics. E-REVs like the Volt still have an engine, although it is only used to extend range and is not coupled to a transmission or the wheels. Not to mention traditional hybrids like the Prius and Insight, which have both an engine and a transmission. Both traditional hybrids and the Volt are designs which bridge the gap between gasoline cars and electrics.

On top of that, electric cars won't eliminate the need for repairs. It will reduce them, and will reduce required maintenence significantly. But there are lots of other things on a car to replace, chassis parts, climate control, tires, brakes, suspension. If your electric motor(s) or batteries do eventually fail, it will be costly to replace them, the industry will make sure of that.

Not to mention that in order to get better performance, some electrics will use a more traditional drivetrain (electric motor coupled to a gearbox). Tesla does this, heck they even tried a 2 gear transmission, but they couldn't secure one that could handle the abuse in time. So they settled for a strong one-gear fixed ratio transmission by Borg Warner that could handle the abuse (the ones with the early trans were locked permanently in second gear which reduced performance, and promised to replace them with the final trans later). I'm sure someone will try 2+ gears again.

Not sure you want to tap into our oil for the purpose of transportation. You never know when you are going to need that oil for national defense. Our high tech war-machine requires massive amounts of oil. One of the big things that stopped the German war-machine in WW2 was being cut off from oil

quote: There must be an answer out there, or maybe not. Why haven't we found an answer to this problem?

Because oil is cheap. Because it's better to use up someone else's resources than your own even if it causes you a little pain from time to time. All of this alternative energy talk is just that, talk. And, as you can now see, this stuff costs money. And without money, it goes nowhere. T. Boone should've spent his money on NG from the get go.

It's not just money, its opportunity. Lets say Country A can build 10 cars and 6 tanks for each full working day at full employment/productivity. Country B can build 8 tanks and 4 cars for each working day because they're more geared towards building tanks.

Country A will have to give up 4 cars to make the additional 2 tanks. So what do they do? They buy the two extra tanks from Country B and then Country B uses the money to do whatever the hell they want with it.

It makes perfect economic sense for a country to buy what they are less efficient at making, and to sell what they are more efficient at making for a better profit.

No, it means your children will be hopefully doing something that progresses human knowledge, improving quality of life, and our race itself, without having to worry about redundant processes.

We don't have unlimited resources to maintain our quality of life and current progression and goals, while pretending to be captain planet. Until our way of life is attacked will we understand how the economy works, and make the changes necessary to economically fix the problem.

You can sit there and try to protect our jobs all you want, but we will lose the competitive advantage sooner or later. Try to think of our nation in terms of globalization as one big giant corporation. If we lose our efficiency and competitive advantages, we are dead in the water. We have to think of new ways to create and maintain a competitive advantage and selling cars or planes at prices no one is willing to pay is not the answer.

Spend it on NG? Hmm, I think the cash would have been better spent on a top secret genetic engineering program that promotes lactose intolerance in all humans. You could have the doctors, or at least, a nurse on the take in every hospital secretly administer the genetic payload to each newborn. In a few years - viola! A natural gas farm!

Why on earth bother drilling for it when you can pump it into your own home. Infrastructure? What infrastructure? It is already in place and leads straight to your local grocery store.

Perhaps they should call it Bush's plan - Bush's baked beans to be exact. 100% Natural, full of protein and most importantly completely portable and a limitless supply.

Just ask my wife, I nearly gassed her out the other night. It was a rumbling thunderstorm and it wasn't in the skies above. It was a roaring torrent of wind that came gushing through the room like a devilish twister of odor just aiming to reach out. Why let it diffuse itself in the atmosphere when you can capture it and detonate it?

Sure, we'll all look like fools walking around with hoses up our behinds but you'll hear joyous crys from children with wonderful phrases such as: "Mommy, look, you have a tail!," and "Are those ducks I hear?"

Not quite as goos as eating babies, but not bad. Personally, I prefer barking spiders to ducks, and I have a dog with gas to put mine to shame so I usually blame mine on him. (I get a semi-playful slap, he gets a pat on the head and baby talk. I figure he doesn't mind.)

This “Foreign Oil” debate is absurd. I can understand not wanting to depend on it, but it’s not that big a deal to depend on a recourse that other countries control when you have the world’s most powerful military. The reason why politicians haven’t made serious efforts to eliminate this dependency is because they don’t need to. Any time a country tries to use it as a weapon to damage your economy, you just invade them. Done.

You may depend on foreign oil, but the only down side is that it’s money out the door, and a nuisance when foreign countries use it to manipulate you. When domestic power sources become cost effective, THEN you eliminate the dependence. Until then, you tread carefully and carry a big stick.

I'm sure it COULD be done, we apparently came close in the late 80's, but very easily? If you have a mystical being in a lamp, wishing for oil independence will likely go as bad as asking for world peace. ;)

If we started drilling for oil offshore, taking advantage of the known resources in Alaska, and processing oil shale into oil, we could produce all the oil we need for over a hundred years at current consumption levels. And we haven't even looked in parts of the Arctic that are now accessible.

If we started drilling for oil offshore, taking advantage of the known resources in Alaska, and processing oil shale into oil, we could produce all the oil we need for over a hundred years at current consumption levels. And we haven't even looked in parts of the Arctic that are now accessible.

The problem is, even if we started all that tomorrow, it'd be 10+ years before a drop reached actual production.Refinery capacity+drilling setup time is pretty substantial.

Second, the cost to produce the amount we need AS FAST as we need it is basically impossible. Yes, we could drill in Alaska... but unless we start 500 projects all at the same time, self-suffiency wouldn't happen for 100 years.... so, maybe if we threw a few trillion at it, it'd be doable...

Third, unless you NATIONALIZE the oil industry, all you're doing is putting that oil into the global market, which means it'll go to the highest bidder - not necessary stay in the US.In other words, if Chinese are willing to pay $5/gallon for gas, well then, all that work you've done is for naught - the free market is going to be shipping that oil out of the US and to China.

The idea that we can drill for oil and become self-sufficient is pretty far fetched -- even more so than wind & solar power.

quote: Third, unless you NATIONALIZE the oil industry, all you're doing is putting that oil into the global market, which means it'll go to the highest bidder - not necessary stay in the US.

Damn. I didn't realize that. Since oil is a commodity, drilling our own wouldn't make much difference. Although, I think if we could rival OPEC's output, we might force them to compete which might drive prices down.

quote: I am still baflled why a country supposedly as great as the US has to depend so much on foreign oil to begin with, & for so long.

Because oil is very cheap for the US. A few taxpayer dollars in the pocket of the right power brokers and we get nice sweetheart deals with foreign resource providers. Why change under such an arrangement? If we can hoard oil now while production is at its peak, we can sell it to developing nations when it becomes more expensive. They'll have no other option so long as we can keep the price of alternatives high, and/or determine who has the right to benefit from them.

quote: I am still baffled why a country supposedly as great as the US has to depend so much on foreign oil to begin with, & for so long. This is many decades in the making & no one has any short term answer or relief for the masses who continue to get hosed at the pump & on their energy bills.

We have the largest economy on the planet, which means we need a lot of oil to make it run. Oil is a worldwide commodity and it doesn't matter where it comes from. We're going to pay the same price as everybody else.

Boone Pickens is very misleading when he talks about "foreign oil". Most people probably think he means the Middle East. In actuality, we buy a lot more oil from Mexico, Canada and Venezuela than the Middle East.

Also, he calls this a transfer of wealth. That is absolutely false. It's an exchange. We give them dollars, they give us oil. A transfer of wealth would be more like an inheritance.

His NG idea may have promise but if his plan is so good, why would he need government subsidies? For an oil man you would think he would understand some of this stuff. The Pickens plan sounds like another energy ripoff being peddled by an aging snake oil salesman.

Of all the things the federal government is funding right now, they should really step in and finance his fucking transmission line since this project is already beyond 10% complete, and will inevitably result in profit!

Indeed but the tree huggers have everyone convinced that every nuclear plant is a Chernobyl just waiting to happen. That combined with the huge investment it takes; let's just say it's not going to happen anytime soon. Governments would rather close coal plants with nothing in the waiting to replace them, causing artificial energy shortages. There's too much bureaucratic red tape in getting these high output facilities built.

They also like to remind everyone of 3 mile island... you know that place where not a single person was injured or killed... the place which is in full operating condition today with even better safety features...

On the other hand however, most people talkabout reprocessing waste but the vast majority of plants still buy mined because reprocessed is so much more expensive. But waste really wouldn't be much of an issue if they can ever get that damn mountain storage facility operating (which has already been built IIRC).

On a positive note, last I checked there were 2 plants waiting for approval for groundbreaking which is supposed to occur by the end of the year. There are another 27 with applications that will likely be approved by end of 2010.

quote: On a positive note, last I checked there were 2 plants waiting for approval for groundbreaking which is supposed to occur by the end of the year. There are another 27 with applications that will likely be approved by end of 2010.

I think there is a third coming also. According to this article 3 might it for the next ten years or there might be as many as 5.

Obama is supporting closure of Yucca Mtn as political payback to Harry Reed (Nevada). Harry Reed's state has collected billions during the construction of Yucca Mtn and now he wants it closed (and that will bring in even more money). All that money and no product. Its a Win-Win for Nevada. Just short sighted as hell.

The good news is that closing Yucca Mtn is quickly reversible with a change in politics. If Harry Reed loses his next re-election, it may get reopened.

quote: The good news is that closing Yucca Mtn is quickly reversible with a change in politics. If Harry Reed loses his next re-election, it may get reopened.

Doubt that is going to change until the people of Nevada and the United States accept that Yucca mountain repersents a very small increase in thier overall risk for the people and enviroment of Nevada. Any politician from Nevada will oppose Yucca for the forseable future, and I don't think the political will exists to force it open (as most people in the US are deathly afraid of Nuclear)

Give him time. By my score card he still has to cycle through ethanol, clean coal, and hydroelectric as the "only option".

After that he will announce a groundbreaking and revolutionary idea called "nuclear" power. That's of course assuming he doesn't first get sidetracked by some alien designed perpetual motion machine he sees on a late night infomercial.

I guess you missed the point. Doesn't matter whether its nuclear, wind, solar, coal, the transmission lines are badly outdated and need to be improved. Otherwise you'll need a nuclear power plant in each city, town and village.

He likely couldn't get the tax payer to pay for it like we did the turbines. And I'm sorry how much can a power lines cost? Especially compared to the cost of 667 wind turbines. He couldn't put up the money for the lines himself without financing? It's not like he or the companies he owns aren't good for the money. Even if trying to finance it.

Pickens doesn't give a rats about green energy. All he cares about is lining his pockets with gold. Since the govt won't pay for the lines he needs, he doesn't stand to rake in the dough on this project, so he's pulling out. Now natural gas on the other hand, there's a resource he can get richer on!

Watch the old Pickens Plan TV spots, and then listen to him today. He's looking out for number 1, he doesn't care about renewable energy or the enviroment. He just thought he'd get a heavily-subsidised profit-making wind farm, and when it turned out he needed to pony up a lot of money out of his own pocket, he turned to another avenue of revenue.

Worldwide, in terms of deaths per GWh of power generated, nuclear is the safest power source man has invented. That's even if you include the deaths from Chernobyl. The most dangerous modern power source is actually hydro - dam failures worldwide have caused high numbers of fatalities. Although there hasn't been a hydroelectric dam failure in the U.S., there have been scattered incidents of workers and recreational boaters being sucked into the intakes and killed in the turbines. Even wind has had fatalities associated with maintenance workers falling.

In contrast, the U.S. has had zero deaths due to commercial nuclear power generation in 50+ years of operation. Heck, MIT operates a nuclear research reactor in the middle of Cambridge, MA, a couple blocks from the student center. In terms of Things That Could Kill You If They're Nearby, nuclear reactors are close to the bottom of the list. Your car is probably on the top of that list. Approx 1 in 86 Americans (not a typo, eighty-six) is fated to die in an automobile accident.

At FIT where I went to college they have a decommissioned nuclear test reactor in the basement of one of the science buildings. You can walk down the stairs and see the doorway which used to lead to it but is now covered in concrete. They operated the reactor for years. And its in the middle of a city (albeit not a very large one).

quote: Approx 1 in 86 Americans (not a typo, eighty-six) is fated to die in an automobile accident.

This is a really good point. In the past 50 years, here is a partial list of things more dangerous than living next to a Nuclear Power Plant or Reprocessing Facility

A. Eating Food. Far far more people have died chocking on a peice of food.B. Anything to do with water. Bathing, Swiming, drinking it, boating, looking at itC. Anything that has a motor and/or wheels. This includes car, motorcycles, lawn mowners, bicycles, merry-go-rounds, everythingD. Being near any sort of animal. Dog, cats, even hamster have been known to spread fatal sickness to owners.E. Walking. This includes tripping, falling down stairs, etc. I knew someone in college who tripped in a bathroom on a flat cement floor, hit his head on a sink and died.

Pretty much, I think each and every person who complaigns about the "Safety" of Nuclear has a list of 10 things they could remove from thier life that each and every one of them are more dangerous that Nuclear has been statistically for the last 50 years.

Different solution, same problem... Generation is not the issue in the US, distribution is. Mr Pickens is rightly diverting his funds to LNG, for which there is currently enough distribution capacity at this time, rather than expanding his Pampa farm's capacity for which there is currently no distribution available. Should Mr. Pickens fund the US's electrical distribution? I am sure that some of you will think so, and perhaps he should. He could charge whatever he wanted over his grid to re-coup the costs of the infrastucture. But by my estimation, he'd have to charge $.44 per KWH carried to pay for the infrascture costs plus ongoing maintenance.

Mr. Pickens wasted 10 Bn US dollars, but proved that the US electrical grid just isn't ready for prime-time at this point in time.